SAN DIEGO, CA – April 24, 2013

“This celebration recognizes more than a decade of work by committed and dedicated individuals who have made this campus a reality,” said Erin Spiewak, Monarch School CEO.

“It is with great pride that we celebrate this accomplishment, while also looking towards the future at what we can now offer our students.”

The Nat & Flora Bosa Campus will allow for enrollment of up to 350 students. The remodeled two-story 51,000-square-foot facility is located on 2.2 acres and offers separate classrooms for each grade level, a science lab, library, literacy and tutoring centers, health clinic, career center, spaces for music instruction and performing arts, and an auditorium that will serve as cafeteria, gymnasium and event space. The site also features playgrounds, outdoor recreation areas, and a student garden, giving Monarch students’ new opportunities to learn and grow.

At Monarch’s current facility, about 150 students and 50 staff members are crowded into 10,000 square feet. Children have been turned away because the school is operating at maximum capacity. Classrooms are doubled up with two grade levels each, tutoring is held in the hallway and lobby, and a small outdoor courtyard next to downtown transit lines serves as a cafeteria, playground, study hall and auditorium.

Monarch is a K-12 public school operating through a partnership between the nonprofit Monarch School Project and the San Diego County Office of Education. Monarch began as a drop-in center for homeless

youth opened in 1987 and was staffed by a single teacher. The nonprofit was later formed to provide support for the school.

“Monarch is a school that the community has really embraced, and we see that clearly with the new site,” said Dr. Randy Ward, San Diego County Superintendent of Schools. “The new site allows the school’s focus to be on educating children to be successful in the 21st century global workplace, not on juggling competing needs for space.”

The number of homeless children in the county has increased from 15,000 in 2011 to more than 18,000 this year, according to the San Diego County Office of Education. The Nat & Flora Bosa Campus is in recognition of the need for expansion in order to serve the region’s growing number of homeless students.

Through years of planning and fundraising, the nonprofit Monarch School Project raised $15 million to build the new school and considered various locations before selecting the Barrio Logan property. Groundbreaking took place in February 2012, and two months later Monarch received its largest gift ever, a $5 million donation from local philanthropists Nat and Flora Bosa, resulting in the campus name.

“An investment in the children of our community is the best investment I could make,” said Nat Bosa, local philanthropist and CEO of Bosa Development. “Monarch’s students are just like any other children and yet they face challenges most of us cannot even comprehend. They deserve a school facility that can give them the tools they need to succeed. My wife and I are thrilled to be a part of the Monarch School family and to help these children and our community break the cycle of homelessness.”

Renovations are nearly complete on the two-story Newton Avenue building that once housed the San Diego Housing Commission and has served as the city’s temporary homeless shelter. Monarch purchased the Newton Avenue building from Civic San Diego, formerly Center City Development Corporation, and financed the renovation with private donations and lending from Opus Bank, Clearinghouse CDFI, United Fund Advisors, and City National Bank.

“Where do you live? I have no problem answering any more. I live in a shelter,” said Andrea, 15, a student at the Monarch School for homeless youth. “No one judges me here.”

More than 25 years after a drop-in center for homeless students opened in San Diego with a single teacher, a gleaming $15 million campus for transient youth will make its debut in downtown’s East Village Wednesday.

Monarch will move out of its cramped Cedar Street quarters and into a 51,000 square foot complex near Petco Park that includes a health center, computer lab, gym, playgrounds and gardens.

It will be a bittersweet celebration.

The sweet part: The new space is ready following a decade of planning, fundraising and setbacks. Monarch will be able to more than double its enrollment to 350 students, offering them three meals a day, education, medical care, counseling, clothing and other services.

The bitter part: The project is a stark reminder that the population if itinerant children is on the rise locally and nationwide. For the first time in its 26-year history, Monarch had to turn away students last year — 100 of them — due to space constraints.

“We are really excited about this move, what it means for our students and what we will be able to do for them,” said Principal Joel Garcia. “The community has been great. With kids, people are very solution-oriented. No one blames a kid for being homeless.”

The nonprofit arm of the school raised $15 million to build the new campus in the former offices of the San Diego Housing Commission that once served as the city’s temporary homeless shelter. The new Monarch School Nat & Flora Bosa Campus has been named for the local philanthropists who donated $5 million to the project.

Located on Newton Avenue, the school is close to homeless shelters, social service centers and mass transportation.

A partnership between the nonprofit Monarch School Project and the San Diego County Office of Education, the unusual educational program serves students from kindergarten through high school who are affected by homelessness. San Diego is one of just four counties nationwide to be given permission from the federal government to run public schools specifically for homeless students.

Why do homeless children need their own campus?

Federal law requires public schools to help homeless students stay enrolled when they lose their housing. But parents are often reluctant to reveal their financial woes to schools and end up moving around, making it easy for their children to slip through the cracks.

“Everyone here understands my situation. There is no stigma,” said Jackie Stebbins, a junior who has attended Monarch on and off since fifth-grade. “I love it here. My school is like a getaway place for me. I don’t have to worry about my problems here.”

Jackie lives with her mother, stepfather, sisters and brother in “a disgusting” two-bedroom apartment in North Park they share with a renter who occupies one bedroom. Other Monarch students live with their families in shelters, cars or motels.

The number of San Diego County children affected by homelessness has climbed from 13,646 in the 2009-10 school year to 17,291 last year, according to the San Diego County Office of Education, which collects the data from local districts and reports it to the federal government.

Under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Act, a federal law implemented in 1987 to help transient children, homelessness is defined as “individuals who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.” That includes those who are “sharing housing due to economic hardship or loss of housing,” which is the case for about a third of Monarch’s students.

Some students spend only a few days or weeks at Monarch when their families fall on tough times and search for stable housing. The average stint is about nine months. Some stay for the majority of their education while their parents remain transient.

Most students arrive at Monarch three years behind grade level. For every six months students spend at Monarch, officials said they progress more than a year academically.

Monarch students and staff will move into the new campus next month. The two-story school is on 2.2 acres and offers separate classrooms for each grade level (the current school doubles up grade-levels), a science lab, library, tutoring center and an auditorium.

“It is awesome, I can’t wait,” said Andrea. “Our classroom has a window. I’ve been waiting for that.”

The new Monarch campus opens at a time when some in San Diego say homeless issues have been given new prominence. Mayor Bob Filner, who is scheduled to attend Wednesday’s celebration, recently extended the city’s emergency homeless shelter by three months and has designated $1.3 million in the budget to make it a year-round operation.

City officials also helped Monarch secure its new campus.

Monarch sold the old campus to the city’s redevelopment agency for $2.04 million and then bought the Newton Avenue building from the agency for $1 and financed the renovation with donations. The city offered Monarch a ground lease with a five-year option to buy the real estate for $2 million. The County Office of Education will lease the space from Monarch for about $642,000 a year.

Bob McElroy, president and CEO of the Alpha Project for the Homeless, has been pleasantly surprised by the city’s recent initiatives. Even so, he said San Diego needs to do more to establish affordable housing to help people get off the streets for good.

“We have a lot of transitional stuff. There is not that inventory of permanent housing that is affordable for families,” said McElroy, who runs the city’s homeless shelter. “That means these awesome kids go to this awesome environment at Monarch and then they go back to the shelter or car or fleabag motel. They deserve better.”

The mural features their favorite places in San Diego, from Balboa Park to Coronado. The children painted the mural at school, and then each piece was transported to Horton Plaza to cover the wall.

Launch Live Art and Frazee Paint helped the young artists put their dreams into a reality by guiding the painting process and paint donation. Once the construction project at Horton Plaza is done, the panels will be taken down and auctioned off, with the money going to the Monarch School.

 This year, the La Jolla Concours d’Elegance will be tipping its hat to some of the world’s finest Classics: Rolls Royce, Bentley, Bugatti, Cadillac, and of course Duesenberg. We hope once again that if diamonds are forever, then cars are timeless. Join us at the 9th annual La Jolla Concours d’Elegance on Sunday April 7th, 2013 and enjoy an afternoon viewing the most magnificent display of vehicles in the world. Buy tickets at the door for $40 or  $35 online. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to Monarch School. To learn more about the Concours d’Elegance visit the event website by clicking here.

Teams will receive entry into the event (a $1,440 value per team), training and coaching by a professional triathlete and certified coach, group discounts from our sponsors, freebies including apparel, nutrition, equipment, and sponsor store discounts, and a tax deduction for donations.

Click here to learn more about Ragnar Relay 2013

Farmers Insurance and the Century Club of San Diego, host of the PGA TOUR’s Farmers Insurance Open, announced this week the formation of a new charitable program, Birdies For Charity. The program will be launched for the first time around the 2013 tournament and utilizes the Farmers Insurance Open as the platform to benefit the eight organizations selected.

The premise of the program is to utilize these organizations, all which focus on issues relating to at-risk youth, to increase the charitable impact of the Farmers Insurance Open by reaching out to the local community for pledges and contributions.

“I saw the success of the Birdies For Charity program during my time with the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial in Fort Worth, TX. In its fifth year the program there generated more than $5 million,” said Peter Ripa, Executive Director, Century Club of San Diego. “We are grateful to Farmers Insurance for their commitment to partner with the Century Club in launching such a potentially impactful charity program in the San Diego area.”

The Birdies For Charity program allows charitable organizations to utilize the awareness and magnitude of a PGA TOUR event to further their fundraising initiatives. Birdies For Charity is active in approximately 20 different cities in the U.S., all using PGA TOUR events as the platform. This is the first year of the program’s inception in San Diego, leading up to the 2013 Farmers Insurance Open (January 21 – 27, 2013). From now until January 18th, charitable organizations will solicit pledges from individuals and corporations who support their organization.  From there, the pledges will be applied to every birdie (1,711 birdies in 2012) made during the 2013 Farmers Insurance Open.

In addition, Farmers Insurance and Century Club of San Diego have donated an additional amount to each organization to form a $125,000 bonus fund, which will be distributed based on their success.

“Farmers Insurance is proud to support the Century Club in the launch of the Birdies for Charity program in San Diego,” said Chuck Browning, Head of Sponsorship and Corporate Giving for Farmers Insurance.  “The program has shown great success across the PGA TOUR and we look for it to multiply the more than $2 million raised through the 2012 tournament.”

The eight local charities participating in the Birdies for Charity program include the Monarch School, Pruess School, Pro Kids Golf / The First Tee San Diego, San Diego Armed Services YMCA, San Diego Center For Children, San Diego Junior Golf Association, San Diego Youth Services, and Voices For Children.

Farmers Insurance and the Century Club of San Diego are dedicated to making a difference locally through its charitable programs.  In the last 50 years, the Century Club of San Diego has generated more than $24 million for San Diego’s charities.

The Monarch School is dedicated to helping San Diego’s homeless children break the cycle of poverty through education. Monarch is a K-12 public school serving more than 400 students each year, ages 4-19. The school provides them with an accredited education, one-on-one tutoring and an after school program, as well as basic necessities such as medical and dental care, food and clothing, hygiene kits, transportation and family assistance.

“The Century Club of San Diego has allowed Monarch School to continue our mission to educate homeless youth in San Diego County” said Erin Spiewak, CEO, Monarch School. “Over the last six years the Century Club has provided us with more than $1.3 million to support our work here at Monarch School.” Pro Kids, The First Tee San Diego is a non-profit organization that challenges underserved youth to excel in life by promotion character development, life skills and values through education and the game of golf. Pro Kids aims to hook kids on golf as a life-long amateur sport, teach them how the rules of the game can be applied to everyday life and empower them to excel in school, develop successful careers and become leaders in the San Diego community. “The partnership with the Century Club of San Diego has been beneficial in so many ways,” said Marty Remmell, CEO of Pro Kids, The First Tee San Diego. “But I think the most important impact that the Century Club has had on Pro Kids have been the personal interaction between our children and the Century Club board members and Farmers Insurance agents. They’ve spent time with the children, providing a great example of someone they can emulate.” The Century Club of San Diego, organized for the main purpose of administering and promoting San Diego’s annual PGA TOUR event, the Farmers Insurance Open, is dedicated to making a difference locally through its charitable programs including Sunday night’s “Kickin’ It Country” event. In the last 50 years, the Century Club of San Diego has generated more than $24 million for San Diego’s charities.

Why undergo such a grueling challenge? Much of their inspiration comes from witnessing another athletic challenge by local businessman, athlete and philanthropist Blair Cannon, who swam 28 miles from Catalina to the mainland to raise money for Monarch School last summer. Heidi met Blair while he was training for his swim at Evolve Physical Therapy where she works. She was fascinated and motivated by this amazing feat to benefit San Diego’s homeless students.

“When we began brainstorming ideas for a bicycle tour this year and decided to use it to support a cause, Blair immediately came to mind,” says Richard. After a phone call with Blair to discuss the idea, he made some introductions and put everything in motion

“Doing these long supported tours reminds me of the obstacles I’ve overcome and how challenging life really can be. Riding for Monarch School is my way of giving back to all the people who helped me along the way. Knowing we’re riding for Monarch will keep me focused, motivated, and on task to complete the 800-mile, 8-day ride.”

The funds represent surplus revenue from the 14th Dalai Lama’s April visit to San Diego. More than 20,000 people attended the discussions in mid-April at the three universities. A donated block of tickets enabled a group of enthusiastic Monarch students to attend these historic events.

Monarch CEO Erin Spiewak said, “Our students were forever changed by the opportunity to hear His Holiness speak, as was I. The experience of hearing the Dalai Lama speak reminded our staff of the importance of our students becoming civic and community leaders and making their voice heard.

Spiewak thanked the Dalai Lama for his message of generosity and hope, and she expressed her gratitude to the Host Committee of the universities for championing Monarch to receive the generous contribution.

During the check presentation and press conference, Tenzin said the donation “is very much in keeping with His Holiness’s message of compassion and love.”  He added that it is fitting for the funds to support children affected by some of the worst problems affecting today’s society, and that the gift accurately reflects the Dalai Lama’s “message of optimism and hope – words for younger people to hold onto.”

Andrea, a Monarch School sophomore and student ambassador, took the podium and spoke candidly about the tough realities of her background and what she learned from listening to the Dalai Lama speak.

“The Dalai Lama shares about forgiveness in his speeches, she said. “Most of my family dropped out and couldn’t help me with things like homework. Learning to forgive them for not being able to help me in school has been hard. But I believe a path without forgiveness is harder.”

The Phil and Amy Mickelson Foundation started the Start Smart program seven years ago as a way to help improve students’ self-esteem and in turn improve their work in the classroom. With the help of Target and the San Diego County Office of Education, the Mickelsons will host another shopping event this year so students can receive new clothing, shoes and school supplies.

We are thrilled that Monarch Students will participate in this year’s event and would like to thank all the volunteers, Target employees and the Mickelsons for this opportunity. Our students and families are eagerly awaiting Saturday’s event and the official start of the new school year!